So, i have decided to join the movember movement this year. check out my page at
Ill be looking for donations to help raise awareness about mens health and prostate cancer! ill chronicle my adventure here on the blog, and on my mobro page. i guess we will see how good of a moustache i can grow in a month!
Please check out the page, and consider donating.
Thanks!
So while in Israel this time, we went to a botanical garden. i was super excited going there, as they were supposed to have lots of orchids and other stuff. The place was a little run down once we finally went inside, but it was still pretty cool. they essentially had some big grounds with different botanical areas, and a large covered hall.
so, lets see what they had….
birds of paradise! always wonderful
and lets go with the orchids
this indoor paradise was huge! there were orchids everywhere the eye could see
i especially liked these cute little ones
these white ones were hard to photograph
Now look at these. holy moly
probably some of my favourites. yellow and cute.
Look at this huge room. its a wall or flowers, waterfalls, and vines galore. how hard could it be to build one of these at home?
this one looks like a pitcher plant almost
this little (helper?) flower amongst the orchids
now, this blew my mind. I’m growing vanilla here at home, and its doing alright, but its growing. but I’ve always heard the leaves get huge in its native habitat. well, here we go, vanilla where its happiest. those leaves are longer than my hands. outrageous and wonderful. i wonder if noa will permit me to build a greenhouse in our living room. (doubtful). anyways, check it out!
so outside they also had some livestock.
the suavest goat I’ve ever seen
they had some orchids passion fruits and their flowers too (ed: thanks jaime! i knew this, for some reason i was just thinking orchids.) I’ve got more about passion fruits to share at a later date.
some nice purple flowers
look at these cool things!
and as we were leaving, they had these little cacti which were flowering
IM supposed to be studying, but instead am listening to youtube songs of carrickfergus, i suppose watching boardwalk empire will do that to you, and decided to update my blog with the new year post from israel. I suppose I’m back a week now, and over the jet lag. I’ve got one more week till noa is back too. I’ve been studying diligently for my PENG exam next monday, but i suppose one can’t study all the time?
Anyways, i had a great two weeks vacation in israel this year for the new year. but, alas, not everything is feathers and pillows. We probably had one of the worse travel experiences getting to Israel this time around. not saying it was bad, things can always go worse, but its the worst I’ve had in a while. We had a flight going from vancouver to toronto, then a brief stop over in paris, and on to tel aviv. the flights were about 5, 6 and 5 hours long. the horrible parts was we were always locked into seats for all the flights, as we not able to change them. so essentially we didn’t get up for any of the flights. and neither of us slept really well. well to make matters better, my luggage didn’t make it either.
But all thats neither here nor there. We arrived, and thats that. So it was a nice 32C the whole time there. well, thats not true, it rained one day, and got to 24 i think? either way, as winter had arrived in vancouver the day we left, it was awfully nice. i forgot what its like to wear shorts and flip flops every day. my main targets for the trip were pretty similar to the usual ones, food, beach, some gardening. we managed to hit most of those. so lets see, i tried going more artsy with my pictures this time around.
i love this tree.
Tel Aviv
Of course we had some of our juices! yum!
and i had some falafel’s
and so did noa
i like this
now i decided to hike the hilly carrot, which is behind Karme Yosef. hike is not really the word, more of a nice walk
lone tree
Noa and i with her village in the background
look at all the bees. these signify fall has arrived in israel….
mangoes! fun! (not ours)
now, my biggest accomplishment the whole trip was my epic battle with the Passie Flora (passionfruit). That damn sucker grew in the 2 years since we planted it, and became an unmanageable monster. but that will have to wait for another post. but this is what it looked like “before”
of course the whole point of this was family time, and for the new year there was a family dinner, out on the patio, that was lovely. i got some pictures of the table being set right before sunset.
and the ever important pomegranates which were picked in the backyard and seeded by myself
and lastly, ill finish off with some sunsets
and my favourite. i don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but i got a 80-200mm 2.8, and she’s a beaut for sunsets.
overall, i was pretty relaxed on the trip, and even got some studying done. it was nice to get away. but as always, our time was way too short.